July 7, 2008

Hmmm. I often click on WaPo front-page links that turn out to go to the "On Faith" page. As soon as I see that inside page, I reflexively decide I'm not going to read it! It's something about the way the front page of the Washington Post is journalistically black print on a plain white background, and then the "On Faith" page is various shades of blue. I've left the realm of reason and entered the squishy soft spot. All that blue — those words "On Faith" — those 2 smiling heads — it says: This is something for other people to read. This is some kind of specialized reading for people who want mainstream assistance in their earnest efforts to devote the appropriate amount of time to struggling gently with religion. I find that instantly off-putting.

So, you're on your own. Some atheists believe in God. Okay?

And speaking of my distaste for WaPo's "On Faith" aesthetic: I'm not buying cereal that is packaged like this:

This high-fiber trio of flakes, twigs, and granola is absolutely delicious. For all the good things fiber does for you, it deserves to be loved.

First of all. Twigs? Second. Fiber deserves to be loved? I don't want relationship neediness from breakfast food. And I don't like the way the paired up heads on the packaging symbolize the cereal's insistence on becoming my close friend. If you're going to foist happy breakfast faces on me, don't be earnest about it. At least have the decency to be surrealistic:

It's the deliberately nonoffensive unitarian can't-we-all-just-get-along Jesus-is-just-alright-with-me What-if-God-was-one-of-us page. It's written by nonpracticing liberals for the three or four remaining liberals who 'wrestle with their faith' (and who generally lose, most often to karmic energies in Sedona, or astrology with a pinch of Buddhism, or to tantric sex).

Think what WaPo will be like when Islam dhimmis them into a mandatory quarter page, which extols the beating of women, murder of gays, and death to infidels.

What will the Bill Moyers types who 'believe' in a little-g-god do then?

I start every day with the red Good Friends. I even have a nice little Kashi bowl to eat them out of. They're delicious. My little dog likes them as well. He says they're better than the little rocks I feed him.

I say the day just isn't the same with out a Good Friends start, my girlfriend says I'm a Kashi Cultist.

"Good Friends" cereal is part of the genre of packaged health-food store foods that I like to call the Social Engineering Diet. I'm sure that you can find them in any number of stores in Madison which cater to BoBo's and Obama supporters. The target demo is the NPR listener who doesn't mind spending twice as mush for foodstuffs as long as the packaging soothes their guilty liberal consciousnesses and flatters their elitist sensibilities.

Yes, I encountered them at Whole Foods. Generally, I like Kashi products and consider the packaging aesthetically pleasing. So I was appalled.

I was stopping to buy a few things after spending some time in the Borders café, where every conversation I overheard was about Obama. People around here seem to like to say "Obama" a lot, as though he's their good friend and they're better people because of it and they want you to know it. I think they picture their head next to his like on that "Good Friends" box.

Ann Althouse said... "People around here seem to like to say 'Obama' a lot, as though he's their good friend and they're better people because of it and they want you to know it."

That's incrementally better than the painfully creepy tendency of many of his supporters to refer to him by his first name (assuming much the same purposes as the people you overhear is the more innocuous explanation). And I'm not talking about situations where there is a colorable reason for it; it's fair game to refer to "Barack" in a post or a column where the subject matter makes it necessary to distinguish between Michelle et vir. But the cultish use of the Vozhd's free-floating first name is cloyingly icky if not actively troublesome.

A lot of people can't bring themselves to believe in a god they’ve been taught.

I suppose some of them channel their innate searching for a higher being to Obama.

In that sense, Obama is a god-substitute. Plus, culturally these days, it’s cool to believe in Obama - in Obama-god. In Obamagadda-da-vida honey. Don’t you know that I loooove yooouuuuu.

Uh….sorry……an inadvertent flashback.

Back on point: the American religionist Joseph Smith wrote of his own spiritual odyssey:

“In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself, “What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, all they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it?”

“…for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.”

Or, put in a modern language and context, Joseph Smith totally gave up reading the “on faith” sections of the newspapers.

I'm sure you had no problem with the adulterous little strumpet's comments on Bill Clinton's sex life, however.

Who would be more qualified to comment on Bill's sex life than an adulterous little strumpet?

Thank you for proving what I've long suspected -- that the reason wingnuts are the world's biggest hypocrites on personal morality issues is because they don't think there's actually anything wrong with hypocrisy.

Excuse me, I have to go find that audio clip of fat junkie Rush Limbaugh referring to Jerry Garcia as "just another dead doper."

Thank you for proving what I've long suspected -- that the reason wingnuts are the world's biggest hypocrites on personal morality issues is because they don't think there's actually anything wrong with hypocrisy.

"Thank you for proving moonbats have no sense of humor, just a clap reflex."

Seriously, though, you're almost right. It's not that wingnuts don't think there's anything wrong with "hypocrisy", it's that they think hypocrisy is inevitable.

Consider: Religious people believe both that moral codes are good things but impossible to adhere to. Nobody but God gets it perfect.

That's what Christians mean by "we are all sinners" and, indeed, the whole point of salvation through Jesus.

One of the finer points being, is it okay just to believe, or do you have to actually try. Most would argue the latter, I think, that it's important to adhere to the code as much as possible, and Jesus is there when you (inevitably) screw up.

The left has a similar religious philosophy called "No enemies to the left". As long as you espouse the right ideals--like, say, Al Gore--the fact that you don't adhere to the principles in the least (don't even address them, even)--is unimportant. As long as you have "free health care", it doesn't matter that your country is impoverished, even if the health care wouldn't pass muster for a dog in the US. As long as you are attacking the imperialist US, it doesn't matter if you blow women or children up. (They were all little Eichmanns anyway.)

Those boxes! Ugh! I always assumed that the couples on those boxes were romantic couples. With who else do you share a bowl of cereal but your bed partner or children? And there aren't children on any of these boxes. So the Hispanic (Hawaiian? Filipino?) man and the white woman? Married? Good Friends with benefits? The black woman and the brunette? Lesbians!

And after downing a few bowls of twigs and needy fiber do these "Good Friends" hit the toilet... together?

Ann Althouse said... "I just realized that[ the way some people talk about Obama i]s exactly the way some people talk about Jesus."

There's an old saw, widely misattributed, that runs to the effect that the atheist is constantly trying to fill the hole in their life - the need for the divine and the need for salvation - that they'll find more wordly things to fill the void. Thus, the saw goes, the problem with most atheists isn't that they don't believe in anything, but that the combination of need and denial is so great that they'll believe in anything as a substitute. We've all had that moment: you need food, but the only thing around is a McDonalds. It's not really as satisfying, and it's not as good for you, but when you're starving and it's what's available, you'll take it, if that's the price you have to pay to keep ignoring the applebeys rights next to you that you're determined not to see.

As applicable today, they latch on to climate change as a cause and Obama as a messiah with quasi-religious intensity because those are what happen to be available to fill the hole. Hardly a surprise that the language is similar.

(Of course, there are atheists to whom this doesn't apply; I'm talking broad generalities here - and from the perspective of an agnostic, not a believer.)

That package has been around since at least the mid-90's. It's a politically "soothing" product, designed to flatter the racially egalitarian consumer. As opposed to Smart Puffs snacks with their cartoon Einstein which flatter supposed intelligence of the consumer.

I used to work in a food co-op and we stocked an entire alternate universe of such products. "Good Friends" is just the tip of a very pretentious iceberg!

Well, this is a mystery. I have bought Kashi cereal for years and years... lots of different kinds... and I've never seen this package before today. Maybe it's been limited to certain regions. Who is this design for? It's socially progressive, but ugly and unsophisticated. I sure wouldn't call it "pretentious." I thought it might be for people in nursing homes. It doesn't fit with the other Kashi products. It's dumbed down Kashi. I'm actually glad to hear that it's been around for a while, though, because I'd hate to see this as the direction of the future. It seems kind of 1970s to me.

Oh well. I was hoping for a discussion about why some of us find the WaPo religion page so annoying. In the best of all possible worlds this would have led to an interesting debate among perhaps traditional believers, agnostic but spiritual people, Spinozists, and no doubt some athiests. I think they all would have reason to object to Sally Quinn, but for very different reasons. This hoped-for discussion would be a nice extension of the not very interesting contradictions noticed by Sam Harris. There are some rather deeper questions raised by the WaPo's approach to covering religion that have only been lightly touched on so far.

What we have, instead, is the same old same old "yer a moonbat" - "yer a wingnut."

Not having Sir Archy to enlighten us, I'd like to quote an 18th century conversation that neatly sums all this up.

Here's the background:

Samuel Johnson ("Dr. Johnson") and Adam Smith met on one occasion only. Samuel Johnson was famously a Tory, but his brand of Toryism stood partly in favour of old feudal relationships and obligations. His basic concept was that people should have a place in this world and not left to beg in the streets. Johnson came to this from many sources, including an energetic and fervent Christianity. Johnson was not a Leveler—in some ways the ancestors of modern socialists—but he was no supporter of the fairly new extremes of capitalism and the beginnings of imperialism either. In many ways, the 20th century writer whom Johnson resembled most closely was George Orwell. (Nor was Johnson a friend to the American Revolution. He saw the contradictions too clearly: "Why is it we hear the loudest yelps for freedom from the drivers of the Negroes?")

Adam Smith with his Wealth of Nations famously invented the beginnings of modern economics. He was, of course, one of the most energetic and intelligent apologists for capitalism who ever lived, entirely the opposite of Johnson. I think more people are familiar with Adam Smith's ideas and writings today than they are with Johnson. As you may imagine, Johnson and Smith stood on opposite sides, in 18th century terms, of the conflict we have, Punch-and-Judy-show-like, between moonbats and wingnuts today.

The debate between Dr. Johnson and Adam Smith had none of the characteristics of a Punch-and-Judy show, however. It made up for its lack of 18th century eloquence with its brevity:

Johnson: "You lie, Sir!"Smith: "You are a son of a bitch!"

Not another word is recorded to have passed between them.

If that's what passed for debate between two of the most enlightened men in the Age of Enlightenment, I suppose I shouldn't be too disappointed in our modern ways. After all, we have invented the internet with which to call each other liars and sons-of-bitches.

And if calling each other names starts to bore us, we can discuss tasty and delicious breadfast cereal, and the boxes it came in, too!

The Good Friends box is actually kind of nice, the people look pleasant and not too fake, but I find the social engineering aspect of it creepy to say the least. Why one would want to market breakfast cereal in such a way is a bit mysterious to me.

Back when they could still advertise cigarettes, they brought forth a brand called American Spirit. Its selling point was that they used no additives or enhancers in the cigarette. Only healthy, natural carcinogens...All advertising is manipulative. What is bothersome is when you don't understand the dynamics of the manipulation. I could never understand why Mr Whipple was an effective toilet paper salesman. Are anal retentives to toilet paper as cacti are to water? The packaging of the cereal serves a marketing purpose, but the fact that it is not apparent raises hackles. Do anyone ever feel lonely at breakfast?

Ann said: "I just realized that's exactly the way some people talk about Jesus."

To such people, I suppose, citing to Jesus gives some authority to what they say and do.

The great irony, totally forgotten of course, is that Jesus himself said: "Many will say to me in that day [when I come again], Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."

So reportedly Jesus wasn’t interested in or impressed by people invoking his name at every turn and being proud of their "brand association" with him. The last phrase seems to suggest that Jesus saw that there would be a lot of iniquity done in his name – that what some people would claim was “casting out devils” and “many wonderful works” were actually, in his view, iniquitous. He says he wants them to leave; he doesn’t want to hang around with them.

Sorry to wax a bit textual. Anne's observation was astute and struck a thought. Whenever I hear someone invoking the name of Jesus for something or other, I always find myself wondering if they fall into the category described above, because I really don’t want to hang around such people either.

What do atheists make up? 10% of the US population? Or are people conflating democrats with atheists? When did the 2nd amendment and low taxation become part of the christian catechism? Is republican and christian synonyms?

I think a lot of global warming hysterics and earth lovers call themselves "agnostic" but what I think they mean is pagan/wiccan/oriental/other.

Some of the posts in this thread are confusing and frankly a bit silly.

Those silly stingy megalomaniacal unhappy atheists who think they don't believe in God are probably just constipated. And their fellow atheists who DO believe in God are even more full of it.

What they could use are some Good Friends - Friends who will be only too happy to force feed them 50% of their daily fiber needs all in one fell swoop even before their Folgers perks it's first secular humanist perk.

If they don't explode first, that should finally get their bowels moving. They'll think they died and went to atheist heaven where they can finally get some sleep once they get off the toilet. But of course even then they won't be able to drop off. They'll be too wide awake with disbelief.

Tough sledding, and filled with medieval barbarisms such as "substance" and "essence" and "instance." But if you can wade through at least most of it, you can have a basis to be an atheist who believes in God.

And if you're a believer, you have your work cut out dealing with 'ol Baruch. You may have your work cut out dealing with Barak, but that's a not unrelated issue for another time.

Anyway, I suspect few of the poll respondants that Sam Harris wonders about were Spinozists.

In 1882 Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote the play An Enema of the People (original Norwegian title: En Folkeklystér) in the response to the public outcry against his play Smear, which was considered scandalous for the time. Smear had challenged the hypocrisy of Victorian moral and dietary fiber and was deemed indecent for its veiled references to fecal incontinence.

In 2002, the cereal Good Friends was released, and Ibsen fans everywhere were relieved.

While writing An Enema of the People, Ibsen started to reevaluate his own beliefs and prejudices. He questioned such matters as love, religion, and morality. His beliefs lead him to turn his back on the Christian teachings of his childhood, and he gradually became more of an atheist.

He began then to worship fiber. Twigs and fiber, specifically. What he wanted most out of life, he wrote during one of his frequent illnesses (thought by modern physicians to be constipation-predominant irritable bowel syndrome), was "a really good dump".(Ibsen: A Brief Life)

It's also an alternate name for the holy Hindi city of Varanasi. This is the ancient city where people burn thousands of corpses each month on the banks of the Ganges, so that their ashes may enter the river.

Yum!

(Kashi of LaJolla, Ca., founded in 1984, has a typically cheery and mysterious website. Its overlords undoubtedly paid an constructional linguistics consultant like NameLab big bucks to find a cool name for the company. Clearly, it wants consumers to associate their Indiana groats with the mystic East where everyone lives long and healthy yoga-filled lives in spiritual oneness with the cosmos.)

"for people who want mainstream assistance in their earnest efforts to devote the appropriate amount of time to struggling gently with religion"

Which is exactly what happened to Newsweek when the managing editor, Jon Meacham, decided his amateur forays into religion would be broadly interesting and insightful, as well as maybe sell more books.

They used to feature Kenneth Woodward, who was I think one of the most insightful religion editors around. Newsweek consistently 'got' the religious topics they studied and added not only great reporting but balance and depth. Meacham took over and it was like going on someone's personal religious journey who had pretty much lost their faith but loved all the religious finery, so was hoping to rebuild their faith without all the supernatural crap.

Making the articles so 100 years ago in insight and even scholarship. I just googled him and noticed that he and Sally Quinn run the interactive conversation on religion at the Newsweek site.

Uninteresting. They exemplify exactly why the mainline denominations are losing members by the truckload, and the kind of people who are still hanging around.

It's the ceremony of religion, the societal meaning, gutted of real faith and having only a veneer of the liturgical.

Neither hot nor cold. It spews. And frankly, it's boring except for those shrinking numbers of baby boomers hoping for the same religious comfort of their lack of belief.

Historical note... early Christians were martyred with the official cause often being atheism.

They refused to believe in the state gods of Rome. Rome didn't care who the Christians spent their time with, but they wanted civil harmony by everyone just giving a wee little sacrifice to the emperor and otherwise accepting the fact there are many gods. Christians said nope. Roman governors said, oh come on, it's not a big deal. Christians still said nope (for the most part). And so got burned and sliced up for the fact.

Kashi is one of the more moronic, hippie-dippy, leftist organic, whole food makers that want to ooze so much love and gaiaist nonsense your way, you actually feel somewhat guilty for not buying their compressed crap. Just give me corn flakes or some rice crispies. At least there isn't the completely idiotic pretense that they want to be my friend and help me through daily constitutional properly.